The Elephant in the Employee Listening Process
Employee listening is a multi-billion dollar industry. It’s critical to business success. And yet, the feedback loop it’s intended to feed, often transpires to be more of a feedback full-stop. Feedback is shared, and then - nothing happens. A Gallup study found that only 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they provide leads to meaningful change.
I spent nearly six years as a People Scientist at LinkedIn and Microsoft, advising clients on their employee listening strategies. In that time, I saw first-hand what works, what doesn’t, and how organizations can fix their broken approaches.
Here’s an honest look at where companies go wrong—and how to get it right.
1. Connect Employee Listening to the Bigger Picture
Too often, employee listening operates in a vacuum. Survey results are reviewed in isolation rather than being connected to broader business priorities.
The best organizations connect the dots—linking employee feedback to:
Employer branding
Onboarding
People development
Leadership effectiveness
Customer experience
They don’t just gather data—they use it to refine and improve the overall employee experience (EX). These organizations design EX around six core employee needs:
Purpose – Do employees feel their work matters?
Connection – Do they feel a sense of belonging?
Clarity – Do they know what’s expected of them?
Empowerment – Do they have autonomy in their work?
Growth – Are there opportunities for development?
Well-being – Are they supported in their health and balance?
Rather than drowning in complexity, the best companies simplify: design EX with these six elements in mind, check in frequently, and train leaders to act on what they hear.
2. Rebalance the Focus of Employee Listening
The focus of conversations around employee surveys is out of balance. An estimated 70-80% of efforts go into survey design and administration, while the crucial discussion—what are we going to do about these results?—is often rushed, riddled with defensiveness, and lacking accountability.
My golden rule for survey design: only ask a question if you have the willingness to do something about it. Too many organizations collect feedback without a clear plan for action, leading to frustration and disengagement among employees.
The fix? Shift the balance—spend less time obsessing over survey design and more time ensuring leadership follows through on the insights gained.
3. Leaders Must Acknowledge Their Defensiveness
The elephant in the room is often the ego of leaders who aren’t ready to hear tough messages like “People don’t understand the strategy you laid out” or “X% of employees don’t have confidence in you.” Those insights are, of course, hard to hear—but the truth is, leaders who embrace employee feedback have a massive competitive advantage.
Employee feedback makes leaders both curious and nervous—and too often, the nervousness wins. Internal teams scramble to soften the message, dilute employee concerns, and avoid difficult conversations.
But here’s the reality: Defensiveness is a normal response to feedback. Ignoring it doesn’t make it disappear. The most effective organizations acknowledge that leaders need support in hearing, processing, and acting on employee feedback.
As a consultant, I saw my role as reducing this defensiveness—helping leaders sit with the discomfort of feedback so that employee voices could actually drive meaningful change.
The fix? Train leaders to embrace feedback, even when it’s tough. Make space for honest conversations and resist the urge to sanitize employee concerns.
4. Stop Reinventing the Survey Wheel
A massive amount of time and energy goes into survey design—unnecessarily. People Scientists have already done the research, identified the right questions, and determined the best ways to ask them.
Yet, every company feels the need to tweak, adjust, or completely overhaul their surveys. What starts as a straightforward measure of employee experience often spirals into an overcomplicated, unfocused questionnaire that creates more noise than signal.
The fix? Use validated research-backed surveys and focus on a simple question: Are we providing the conditions employees need to thrive?
The Bottom Line
If you want to build a people-centric organization:
✅ Design the employee experience around core employee needs. ✅ Use listening as a tool to assess progress. ✅ Train leaders to hear and act on feedback effectively.
Employee listening isn’t about surveys. It’s about understanding, responding, and continuously improving the conditions employees need to thrive. Get that right, and you’ll have an organization where people don’t just work—they flourish.